Despite hyping it up as one of the biggest features of the Galaxy S8, Samsung has still not been able to release Bixby in its full form. Bixby's core voice functionality has only been released in South Korea with support for the country's language.
Recent reports suggest that the company is facing trouble in getting Bixby to work properly with the English language. Some reports have even claimed that the company just doesn't have enough big data to train Bixby to effectively understand English. That led us to ask whether or not Samsung will have Bixby ready before the Galaxy Note 8 is out.
Samsung has quietly acquired a company that might be able to help out with Bixby. It's a startup based in Greece called Innoetics. The startup has developed text-to-speech and voice-to-speech technology which can do several things including listen to a person speaking, train on their voice and then read a piece of unrelated text in that same voice.
The company has confirmed its acquisition of Innoetics, which according to reports has cost it under $50 million. It doesn't say what the technology will be used for, only claiming that “Samsung is always exploring ways to deepen our relationships with companies like Innoetics whose technologies present an opportunity to strengthen Samsung’s capabilities.”
It's not surprising to see Samsung pick up companies that have experience in this space. Bixby is new and up against established rivals like Siri and Cortana. The company certainly needs all the help and technology it can to make Bixby stand out from the crowd.
After all, it's not like that standalone Bixby speaker that Samsung is developing is going to have an empty playing field.
